"_The_ GRAND _practical use_," says the learned Mr. Immison, who, though a Scotch monarchist himself, had the extraordinary virtue to be a profound admirer of our republican American,--"the grand practical use which Dr. Franklin made of this discovery was to secure houses and ships from being damaged by lightning; a thing of vast consequence in all parts of the world, but more especially in North America, where thunder gusts are more frequent and their effects, in that dry air, more dreadful than they are ever known to be with us. This great end he accomplished by the cheap, and seemingly trifling, apparatus of a pointed metallic rod, fixed higher than any part of the building, and communicating with the ground, or rather the nearest water. This rod the lightning is sure to seize upon preferably to any other part of the building, unless it be very large; in which case, rods may be erected at each extremity; by which means this dangerous power is safely conducted to the earth, and dissipated without doing any harm to the edifice." Had any thing more been necessary to convince the world of the value of lightning rods to buildings, it was abundantly furnished by several very terrible instances of destruction which took place about this time in several parts of America, for no other reason upon earth, as every one must admit who reads the account, but the want of lightning rods. There, for example, was the affair of the new church, in the town of Newberry, New-England. This stately building was adorned on its north end with an elegant steeple or tower of wood, running up in a fine square, seventy feet from the ground to the bell, and thence went off in a taper spire of wood, likewise seventy feet higher, to the weathercock. Near the bell was fixed an iron hammer to strike the hours; and from the tail of the hammer, a wire went down through a small gimblet hole in the floor that the bell stood upon, and through a second floor in like manner; then horizontally under the plaistered ceiling of that floor to a plaistered wall, then down that wall to a clock which stood about twenty feet below the bell.